Wrote one reader: So while the employees of the government get punished for the lack of fiscal responsibility of this government, tell me if Mr. Hagel will himself get a furlough. Bet not!!

Amber Corrin responds: While Hagel might not face an actual work furlough – many would probably object to the Defense Secretary skipping out on his national security duties – a pay cut still is a possibility. In April Hagel publicly said that he would forfeit part of his salary, even though as a presidential appointee he is exempt from furlough.

Another reader wrote: I question the legality of forcing the services that have the money to meet payroll to furlough their civilians instead, just to show consistency and fairness with the services whose budgets are running short. Is money typically transferred or shifted between [the Navy, Army and Air Force departments] for other purposes? I also agree with others who have noted that by taking so much time to decide, DOD leadership is forcing employees into a 2-day furlough per pay period situation. An earlier decision and earlier execution of the furloughs could have reduced the pain by limiting furloughs to 1-day per pay period. By trying to find the money (from where?) to continue reducing furlough days, it is my household budget they are gambling with!

Amber Corrin responds: It is not clear if the services would be forced to furlough civilian employees if they do not need to do so to meet sequestration budget cut requirements. DOD Comptroller Robert Hale in a press conference did say that the preference would be for decisions to be uniform across the services, but stopped short of any specific requirements for furlough regardless of financial arrangements.

"We would like to see consistency and fairness, because if we're going to have to jump into this pool, we'd like to jump together," Hale said in an April 11 congressional hearing.

In general, money typically is not transferred between departments. At DOD they like to refer to buckets of funding as "colors of money" and historically speaking, rarely do these colors cross each other. If there is leftover money of one color left in a "pot" – which Pentagon officials and program managers try very hard to avoid – it gets returned to the Treasury Department. Like a lot of decision-making today, there remains a lot of uncertainty, and increasingly leaders are allowing for more wiggle room in priorities. So it is always possible that this could change.

As for the number of furlough days per pay period, the original plan, when the number of furlough days was pegged at 22, was to furlough DOD civilians two days per pay period. Although the number of furlough days has been reduced to 14 – and could still be further reduced – it was, from the beginning, planned that employees would be forced to take one unpaid day of leave per week for the last 22 weeks of the fiscal year. DOD officials so far have declined FCW requests for comment on how this may change with fewer furlough days.

Reader comments

Sat, Jun 1, 2013

There is no need to furlough anyone. The Army which I work for wastes money like there is no tomorrow. Amazing how TDY is starting again and how non-essential training continues unabated. Want to save some money RIF some O5+ officers that have nothing better to do than come up with outrageous ideas to waste money.

Tue, May 14, 2013

All Congress is accomplishing with these furloughs is pushing the costs down the road for the next congress to handle. For instance, my wife currently plans to retire at the end of February 2014. Whether she is furloughed for 14 days, or 11 days; that will simply move here retirement date to March instead of February which will cost the government 2 extra paydays. Not to mention the fact that we, as hard working government employees should not be required to bear the cost of the Bridge to Nowhere and other such pork barrel legislation. Another idea is to stop conducting government business in the same manner as private business. It absolutely makes no sense to give one government entitiy money to pay onother government entitiy to perform a government function. That is a complete waste of resources.

Mon, May 13, 2013

Come October there will be RIFs not furloughs.

Mon, May 13, 2013

Civilian pay should never come into play. There are so many programs that can be cut and the money put into civ pay. Lets put a law into place that prohibits pork barreling if that happened so much money would be saved on programs that really don't matter.

Mon, May 13, 2013

You know several years back we had the same situation, and then ended pushing out some of our staff that were up for retirement, though it kept some good people on it was unfair to those who were still looking at a paycheck to pay-off there bills before they retired. Then you have those that have no life but there work and coming to it because that is all they live for, who could have retired like 5 yrs ago but will not until they are pushed out. You do not want to be ugly about any of this so how do you make those decisions. If someone at this stage of life is 65 and can retire they really need to take it and enjoy what time they hav left and give the young ones a chance at reaching there retirement with age and time. We have become so greedy that we can not share the wealth anymore. Just one person's opinion.